Imelda gets it

Several years ago I was at the Royal Albert Hall for the annual Jools Holland gig. Support acts are sometimes a bit hit and miss, but that year it was stunning.

I’d never heard of Imelda May, and this was her first performance on the big stage. From the moment she walked on she had the audience of 7,500 people eating out of her hand. Not only was the music fantastic and her voice immense, but she commanded the stage with a charisma that, I think, took everybody by surprise. It’s not every support act that you want to keep going at the expense of the main act, but in this case she could have done another hour.

I’ve just (finally, and after meaning to do it for a year) got her album Mayhem. It is superb. The songwriting ranges through love and loss to eternity and sadness via a psycho and a prayer. Even a waltz finds its way through the energetic rockabilly and her voice is perfect. But, what struck me (as it would) is the insight you get from one song into spirituality. Proud and humble is a prayer, a confession, one that stands in its simplicity with the openness of a Leonard Cohen. Here’s a stripped down studio version of it:

Like Cohen, she holds together the honest reality of human living in which we try to be godly, but get it wrong a million times. It’s Cohen’s ‘holy and broken hallelujah’ – the two held together in a confusing life that drives us through passion and prayer to some sort of muddle. But, again like Cohen, she doesn’t make excuses for ‘living’ and all that’s involved in milking life’s opportunities for love and laughter – even when they lead to pain and tears.

Oh, I made the most from what I knew then / But if I lived it over I’d do the same again / I try, I try for You to please / But you know I’m only human, You created me.

She recognises humility at failed attempts to be holy, but can look God in the eye and say, “But, at least I lived.” There’s something here about the parable of the talents in which the guys who risked losing their deposits got praised and the one who buried his in order to protect it from harm got damned. The song concludes:

Well I’m humbled by You and thankful oh Lord / Istudied Your life and Your holy word / But I hold my head just a little high / ‘Cos I’m proud that I got on with this given life.

That’s not arrogance; that’s honesty. Life is for living. And Imelda may have understood it better than some of us.

Whatever. The whole album is brilliant. Not one weak song. And Marc Almond’s Tainted Love is painted in fresh colours while Johnny got a Boom Boom just makes you want to dance.

“the honest reality of human living in which we try to be godly, but get it wrong a million times”

In ‘Dr Faustus’ Thomas Mann writes that nothing can be considered good unless it corresponds to an idea of ‘good’ and it is not possible to formulate a notion of ‘good’ without reference to a notion of ‘bad’ or, as he puts it, to formulate a notion of what is “good and beautiful without reference to the evil and ugly”. It is “the problem of quality without comparison”. Without the not-good bits, the good bits would be meaningless or “unqualitied”. It makes a lot of sense that in our fumbling attempts to live well we must have some idea of what it means to live ‘unwell’.

So, big voice but not so sure about “if I lived it over I’d do the same again.” Would she really? Would we? Would anybody?

Love this Imelda May track Nick and so does my 9 year old daughter who is not well and lying very downcast on the couch. We would normally be at church , but but I’m doing the childminding while wife has gone this morning!.

You also do not realise how much you have gladdened my heart. A scouse Bishop…a REAL Scouser as a Bishop. Yes!!! Wherabouts do you hail from in God’s own city!? I’m from inner city Bootle where the going can be really tough at times. Our church building in the middle of a council estate was sold off and flattened as part of a regeneration project, and then the £150,000 we were promised by the local council towards our new church building/community project was withdrawn in the first round of funding cuts after the Coalition were elected causing the project to collapse completely . We have been “homeless” since and then were invited unexpectedly by the Head Teacher of the local state run new primary school to come and worship there! We have been there for almost a year now and it is going really well.

I commented in an earlier post about my frustration with the merging AMIE “organisation” I see that you are a bit of Brian McLaren fan. His books have been so helpful to me over the past few years. I think my frustration with AMIE is that I accet there are things that need changing, but as evangelicals we need a much more “generous orthodoxy” if our mission in the 21st century church is to be meaningful, relevant and effective. I somehow don’t think Reform and AMIE are really into generous orthodoxy.